A Rivian R1T owner faced a massive bill after a low-speed parking incident.
Insurance estimated $1.7K but later refused to pay the certified shop’s bill.
Owner paid out of pocket, fought insurance, and recovered only part of it.
Rivian owners take on a risk that many may not fully appreciate when they buy one of these trucks. It’s not just about the company being young, or its future still being written. Those are expected gambles.
The real hidden concern and surprise comes when something goes wrong, and not mechanically, but physically. Damage that would be a quick fix on a Ford, a Toyota or most other legacy carmakers can turn into a financial nightmare with a Rivian, sometimes severe enough to write off the vehicle altogether.
It’s becoming an increasingly common problem, and the ordeal one owner continues to face shows just how complicated it can get.
When Simple Damage Isn’t Simple
Back in May of this year, the employee of a Rivian R1T owner backed into his electric truck. The damage appeared quite straightforward in the rear quarter panel. However, this is a Rivian R1T, so “straightforward” doesn’t really apply in this case.
The rear quarter panel is part of one giant piece that actually includes the roof. In other words, fixing a dent in it, especially a large one, isn’t a simple job. We’ve seen instances of paintless dent repair (PDR) being a savior in some cases. This isn’t one of them.
The owner of the R1T says that his employee’s insurance company initially quoted just $1,700 for the repair. Considering that many of these situations end up in the five-figure range, he knew that was potentially problematic. To that end, he contacted Rivian, and things only got worse from there.
The True Cost of Rivian Repairs
The automaker explained that there was only one certified repair shop within 300 miles (about 480 km), and their estimate came in at a whopping $16,000. Given the huge gap, the owner started asking PDR shops for help, but none would touch the R1T.
That said, the owner decided to go ahead and go with the certified repair shop, hoping that the final bill would come in lower than the estimate. Instead, the shop found additional damage once the truck was in the building.
The total came to $22,000 after a seven-week repair process. The ordeal wasn’t even over after all that because insurance refused to pay that amount.
Instead, it offered $13,000 and said that the certified repair shop’s rates were excessive. Faced with either paying the $9k himself or entering arbitration that would delay pickup indefinitely, the owner paid the difference, retrieved the truck, and launched an appeal.
His letters were ignored. A second, more forceful letter outlining what he considered an unfair settlement? Also ignored. Only after filing a complaint with his state’s Secretary of State did the insurer finally respond, this time offering an additional $5,100 to make the issue go away.
The state recommended accepting the offer, and the owner did. “I really enjoy this truck, but this is bonkers,” he says. “I hope Rivian improves design to allow for less expensive repair costs for common dings.”
No doubt, plenty of other Rivian owners hope the same thing.
Two of the biggest political issues of the year are immigration and health care.
In the latest Marquette Law School Poll, 75% of Republicans said they were very concerned about illegal immigration and border security while 83% of Democrats said they were very concerned about health insurance. Those were the top issues among those groups. (Among independents, 79% said they were very concerned about inflation and the cost of living, making it their top issue.)
Here’s a look at some recent fact checks of claims related to health care and immigration.
Health care
No, Obamacare premiums aren’t doubling for 20 million Americans in 2026, but 2 to 3 million Americans would lose all enhanced subsidies and about half of them could see their premium payments double or triple.
Yes, Obamacare premiums increased three times the rate of inflation since the program started in 2014. They’re making headlines now for going up even more.
No, 6 million people have not received Obamacare health insurance without knowing it. There wasn’t evidence to back a claim by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about the level of fraud in the program.
No, Wisconsin does not have a law on minors getting birth control without parental consent. But residents under age 18 can get birth control on their own.
Immigration
Yes, unauthorized immigrants have constitutional rights that apply to all people in the U.S. That includes a right to due process, to defend oneself in a hearing, such as in court, though not other rights, such as voting.
No, standard driver’s licenses do not prove U.S. citizenship. There’s a court battle in Wisconsin over whether voters must prove citizenship to cast a ballot.
Yes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is offering police departments $100,000 to cooperate in finding unauthorized immigrants. It’s for vehicle purchases.
No, tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants do not receive federal health benefits.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) questions a witness at Thursday's hearing of the Assembly labor committee about the unemployment insurance bill produced by the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
A business lobbyist Thursday sought to salvage a new unemployment insurance bill that has sparked opposition from some Democrats and advocates for people with disabilities.
The bill came from the joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. The council is historically a source of consensus legislation to update Wisconsin’s laws on jobless pay, but its 2025 proposal includes provisions Democrats have strongly opposed.
The senior Democrat on the Assembly’s labor committee has disavowed the bill because it includes a financial penalty for people who receive federal disability pay if they apply for unemployment insurance when they’re laid off from a job.
The council bill also contains several other changes that Democratic lawmakers have unanimously opposed and Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed in the past.
Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce testifies in favor of the unemployment insurance bill produced by the Wisconsin Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council. Manley heads the management caucus for the joint labor-management council. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
At a public hearing Thursday on the legislation,AB 652, Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce emphasized that the measure had the unanimous support of both the management and labor members of the advisory council.
Manley chairs the council’s management caucus. Representatives from the council’s labor caucus did not take part in the hearing.
“There’s a reason we have a council,” Manley told the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor and Integrated Employment. “It’s a process we believe in. We think it’s a process that works. And we would ask everybody in the community to respect that process.”
WMC and other business groups have repeatedly backed Republican legislators’ bills to change the state’s unemployment laws when they bypassed the joint advisory council. Evers has regularly vetoed such bills.
Manley said that it would be unprecedented for an advisory council bill to split the Legislature on party lines, however.
“My fear is that if the Legislature decides to turn this into a partisan issue, despite the fact that it was unanimously supported by labor and management, that Gov. Evers would consider vetoing the bill,” Manley said.
If that happens, he said, the bill’s $25 bump in the state’s maximum weekly jobless pay — the first increase in more than a decade — would likely be put off until 2027.
Victor Forberger, a lawyer who specializes in unemployment law, said even that increase, bringing the maximum benefit to $395 a week, was inadequate compared with surrounding states.
Minnesota tops out at $914 a week, Forberger testified. Iowa’s maximum is $602 and Michigan’s is $446, with an increase to $530 in 2026.
“We’re not keeping pace with the states around us,” Forberger told the committee. “We’re not even coming close to that
The disability-jobless pay conflict
The advisory council bill’s highest-profile point of contention applies to people who receive Social Security Disability Income.
Since 2013, Wisconsin law has automatically disqualified SSDI recipients from collecting jobless pay, even if they get laid off from a job and otherwise meet the requirements for unemployment compensation.
A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the SSDI jobless pay ban violated federal law. After an additional court order this summer, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development is now reviewing the cases of people denied unemployment compensation in the last 10 years due to the SSDI ban, and is issuing payments to those who qualify.
The joint advisory council unemployment bill repeals the ban on unemployment insurance for SSDI recipients. But it would also cut their jobless pay by 50% of their SSDI pay.
That provision led Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the labor committee, to keep her name off the list of sponsors for the advisory council bill.
“I simply cannot support taking benefits from those who are disabled,” Sinicki said when she, along with the committee’s other two Democrats, voted against the bill’s formal introduction Thursday. “They receive very little money to begin with. And now to reduce their benefits to me is unconscionable.”
Manley defended the 2013 law that excluded SSDI recipients from the unemployment insurance program.
“SSDI is intended to compensate somebody for their loss of earning capacity based on a disability,” he said. “And unemployment is supposed to compensate somebody through the loss of their earnings because they were laid off or their job was eliminated or some other reason that’s no fault of their own. So, that’s why the policy decision was made in the first place that we wouldn’t allow people to have both benefits.”
While the court ruled against a blanket exclusion from unemployment compensation for people getting SSDI, Manley argued that offsetting their jobless pay by a portion of their disability income is comparable to existing provisions that offset unemployment benefits based on other wage income.
Unemployment insurance lawyer Victor Forberger testifies against the bill from the joint labor-management unemployment insurance council. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
But SSDI is not like a wage, said Forberger, whose lawsuit overturned Wisconsin’s SSDI jobless pay ban.
“SSDI is essentially getting your Social Security benefits early,” Forberger testified. While Social Security payments are based on lifetime earnings at retirement age, he said, unemployment is based on a recent job loss, and unemployment benefits are based on earnings in the last year and a half.
The average SSDI benefit in Wisconsin as of December 2023 was about $1,400 per month, he said. SSDI recipients take part-time jobs because their disability income “is not enough to support themselves,” Forberger said. “They need additional money to make ends meet.”
The federal Social Security Administration, which administers the disability program, encourages recipients to work so they might make a transition back to the workforce and no longer need benefits. “Essentially, what Wisconsin is saying to disabled folks here is . . . ‘We don’t want you working anymore,’” Forberger said.
Other provisions
Several other items in the advisory council bill previously were part of Republican bills that Evers vetoed in the past when they reached his desk.
One would require DWD to establish a website where employers could report unemployment compensation recipients who “ghosted” job interviews or didn’t show up for the first day on the job after an offer.
Another would require audits of 50% of all work searches by people collecting jobless pay. In 41% of work search audits that DWD conducted, “claimants failed to fulfill weekly work search requirements,” said Brian Dake of Wisconsin Independent Businesses. “We believe this data justifies the need for more audits.”
A third provision stipulates specific checks that DWD should make to ensure that a person who makes an unemployment claim isn’t stealing another person’s identity or engaged in some other fraudulent activity.
The bill also would mandate electronic filing of payroll information for business owners with fewer than 25 employees.
Forberger, in his testimony, rejected all those provisions as ineffectual or unnecessary.
“Ghosting interviews is already illegal in this state,” he said, with stiffer penalties than outlined in the bill. Employers, he added, are unlikely to go to the trouble of filing a report and take the time for the hearings that would follow.
Forberger observed that the department already consults a wide range of databases in checking out claims. And he said small employers have sought his help after making mistakes and getting in trouble with the department in filing required payroll documentation.
“To mandate online-only filing is just going to make it that much harder for these employers,” Forberger said.
(According to DWD communications director Haley McCoy, in 2024 about 97% of taxable employers with fewer than 25 employees submitted their wage reports electronically. “Fewer and fewer employers file on paper every quarter with current figures showing less than 3% filing by paper,” McCoy told the Wisconsin Examiner.)
Forberger said the bill’s work search audit requirement was redundant, because DWD already conducts work search audits of every person who is approved for benefits. He said he’s heard from many people who don’t understand what constitutes a work search and how to report it.
“When they’re getting audited, they’re getting disqualified,” Forberger said. “If you really want to improve the system, DWD needs to start doing some training and helping people how to navigate the system.”
This report has been updated to clarify that work search audits are conducted for people who are approved for unemployment benefits.
The amount some pay for Affordable Care Act health insurance will double when enhanced subsidies expire, but there isn’t evidence the number is 20 million.
KFF, a health policy nonprofit, estimates monthly payments for Obamacare recipients will increase, on average, $1,016 – more than doubling, from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026.
That counts increases to premiums and lost subsidies.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, citing KFF, made the 20 million claim. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Sanders was wrong.
KFF doesn’t say how many of the 24 million Obamacare enrollees will see premiums double.
But 2 to 3 million people on the high end of income eligibility would lose all enhanced subsidies. About half could see premium payments double or triple.
Enhanced subsidies, created in 2021, expire Dec. 31. Some Obamacare enrollees will receive lower enhanced subsidies or none. Standard subsidies remain.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sign on the door of the Dane County Job Center in Madison, Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Unemployed Wisconsinites could lose a week’s jobless benefits if they don’t show up for an interview if a new draft bill becomes law.
The same measure would also turn up the scrutiny on the weekly work searches that people who’ve lost a job must undertake to collect unemployment insurance.
Gov. Tony Evers has repeatedly vetoed bills authored by Republicans in the Legislature that contain those and other changes to Wisconsin’s unemployment compensation system.
In his veto messages, Evers, a Democrat, has consistently criticized GOP lawmakers for trying to change the rules on jobless pay without working through Wisconsin’s joint labor-management Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council.
This time, however, the proposals have come from the advisory council itself.
On Sept. 24, the council voted to advance a bill that was endorsed by both its labor and management members. Despite that unanimous backing, some worker advocates are condemning the draft legislation.
“This is a terrible, terrible bill,” said lawyer Victor Forberger, whose practice focuses on representing people whose claims for unemployment compensation have been rejected by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) speaks at a press event held by legislative Democrats in September, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
State Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the ranking Democrat on the Assembly’s labor committee, has repeatedly scolded Republican lawmakers for proposing unemployment insurance changes without going through the advisory council.
But after reading the advisory council’s draft legislation, Sinicki said, “I will not be voting for the bill, and we will probably offer an amendment to it.”
Shane Griesbach, a union official who chairs the council’s labor caucus, defends the council proposal, highlighting that it includes an increase in the maximum weekly unemployment benefit for the first time in more than a decade.
“It was a compromise between both labor and management on various issues,” Griesbach told the Wisconsin Examiner.
The draft bill has not yet been formally introduced in the Legislature. On Tuesday, Oct. 28, members of the Assembly Committee on Workforce Development, Labor, and Integrated Employment were told by email to hold their calendars open for a hearing on Nov. 13.
Labor-management negotiations
From the launch of Wisconsin’s unemployment compensation system in 1932 — the first of its kind in the country — the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council has been a standing feature, intended to reflect the interests of both sides.
Laura Dresser, courtesy University of Wisconsin
“The Wisconsin UI advisory council — with five representatives each from labor and management — was designed to balance the needs of workers and employers in unemployment insurance policy,” said Laura Dresser, associate director of the High Road Strategy Center, a think tank at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that focuses on the impact of economic policy and trends on working people.
“It is a good idea, and part of the Wisconsin Idea, to build this sort of policy infrastructure around the people who rely on and fund the system,” Dresser said. “But if either labor or management thinks they can get a better deal from the Legislature than the advisory council, that undermines the policy-making power of the council itself.”
Under the typical protocol for bills that come from the advisory council, Sinicki, as the ranking minority party member of the labor committee would be listed as a coauthor of the legislation.
But Sinicki objects to the bill’s proposed penalty for people with unemployment claims who receive federal disability payments. If that doesn’t change, “I will not put my name on the bill,” Sinicki said
Since 2013, people laid off from work have been denied unemployment compensation if they also received Social Security Disability Income. This summer, a federal judgeended that ban, and the advisory council’s draft bill removes the ban as well.
But the draft bill also includes an “offset” that would claw back money from the SSDI recipient’s jobless pay each week. Over the course of one month, the amount clawed back would equal 50% of the recipient’s monthly disability check.
Earlier this year, DWD proposed to the advisory council ending the SSDI jobless pay ban but deducting 100% of federal disability income.
In September, Sinicki and state Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) introduced their own bill torepeal the SSDI unemployment pay ban and criticized DWD’s offset recommendation. Nine days later, the department told the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council it wasdropping the offset proposal entirely and simply recommending an end to the SSDI jobless pay ban.
The advisory council brought back the offset, however, at 50% rather than 100% of the federal disability income, in the draft bill approved Sept. 24.
Forberger said that at either 100% or 50%, requiring an offset against disability income is likely to wipe out jobless pay for many SSDI recipients.
Resurrecting vetoed changes
Other provisions in the advisory council draft have previously passed the state Legislature with only Republican votes, and then been vetoed by Evers.
‘Ghosting’ interviews: Unemployment insurance recipients accused of “ghosting” a scheduled job interview — failing to show up — would lose their weekly jobless pay for that week. A recipient would also lose benefits for a week for declining a job offer or failing to report on the first scheduled work day after being offered a job.
Victor Forberger
Republican lawmakers this year passed legislation that also would penalize “ghosting” interviews and rejecting job offers. No Democrats voted for the legislation, and Evers vetoed the bill, AB 169, on Friday.
“I object to creating additional barriers for individuals applying for and receiving benefits from a program that is designed to support people and families experiencing economic hardship, as well as creating additional mandates for the department in administering these benefits,” Evers wrote in his veto message.
Forberger said the ghosting penalties — which have been introduced and vetoed in past years as well — are unneeded, with unemployment insurance claims remaining at close to record lows.
“We’ve still got a huge worker shortage in the state,” Forberger said. “This does absolutely nothing.”
Work search audit quotas: Another provision in the advisory council bill would require DWD to audit the work searches of half of all people making unemployment claims.
Eversvetoed a bill in 2023 that included the work search audit requirement.
“I object to this bill because the department already has substantial eligibility requirements and fraud prevention mechanisms in place to protect the unemployment system from potentially fraudulent activity,” Evers wrote at the time.
In response to a Wisconsin Examiner inquiry, DWD Communications Director Haley McCoy said via email that the department’s unemployment insurance division “has a well-established work search auditing program.” People making unemployment insurance claims must report their required work searches each week, which are subject “to random or targeted audits,” McCoy said.
McCoy declined to specify the department’s current audit frequency, calling that information “sensitive” and confidential “to protect program integrity.”
Identity proofing requirements: The advisory council bill includes new requirements for unemployment insurance applicants to prove their identities, and would require DWD to follow specific steps, including comparing applications for jobless pay against databases tracking death records, employment records, citizenship and immigration records.
On Friday Evers vetoed AB 168, which included similar identity proofing requirements.
“The department already implements comprehensive fraud prevention strategies, including identity verification, making the proposal to mandate identity proofing both unnecessary and overly burdensome of claimants,” Evers wrote in hisveto message.
A benefit increase
The advisory council bill includes a one-time $25 increase in the maximum weekly payment that goes to jobless workers: to $395 a week starting in 2026, from $370 a week.
Screenshot of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development unemployment insurance home page.
“The last time unemployment has seen an increase in the weekly benefit rate was 2013,” said Griesbach, the council’s labor caucus chair.
Griesbach said that benefit increase, the unemployment insurance clawback for disability pay, the “ghosting’ penalty and the work search audit requirements were all products of the advisory council’s consensus process.
“All those things were part of an agreed-upon bill between labor and management and negotiation and compromise by both groups,” Griesbach told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It was an agreed-upon bill, and there were a lot of different topics that were discussed, and that was the compromise that was reached.”
Forberger said the proposed benefit increase keeps Wisconsin’s top unemployment benefit well below other Midwestern states.
In Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois, the maximum weekly benefit is at least $500 a week or more. Only Indiana, with a maximum benefit of $390 a week, would be lower, he said.
“This is a paltry increase,” Forberger said of the Wisconsin proposal. “It’s nothing to brag about.”
The advisory council bill’s increase is also less than DWD had recommended in its proposals to the council. The department proposed raising the maximum weekly benefit by $127 in 2026, to $497, and then indexing the maximum to the consumer price index in 2027.
Sinicki acknowledged that by giving new life to Republican-authored unemployment insurance bills that she’s sharply criticized in the past, the advisory council’s bill has put her in a difficult position.
The ghosting penalty, for example, is an “attempt to throw more people off of unemployment insurance,” Sinicki said. She also voiced skepticism of increasing work search audits without funding more staff positions.
But the disability penalty, she said, is more than she would be willing to support.
“This puts me in a very tough spot, and also puts a lot of Democrats in a very tough spot,” Sinicki said. “As a Democrat, I cannot vote to take away benefits from disabled people.”
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's secretary designee, Amy Pechacek, right, with Gov. Tony Evers at a 2023 DWD event held at the Plumbers Local 75 training center in Madison. Pechacek held a news conference online Thursday where she spoke about the impact of the federal government shutdown on DWD and the state. (Photo courtesy of DWD)
As the federal shutdown drags on, Wisconsin is likely to feel the impact — in employment, in agriculture and in the safety net for workers, according to the state’s labor secretary.
“Right now, we have the ability to continue to operate and our goal is to not disrupt our current workforce programs or state workforce,” said Amy Pechacek, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, during an online news conference Thursday.
Governments in some other states have started to reduce their workforces, Pechacek said. Wisconsin is holding off on filling vacancies and taking other steps “to try and preserve all of the funding we can so that we don’t have programmatic or employment disruptions,” Pechacek said.
Nevertheless, 75% of the DWD’s $500 million annual budget — three out of every four dollars — comes from the federal government, she said.
The remaining 25% that comes from the state isn’t “just one big pot,” Pechacek added, but funds specific programs. For example, the state workers compensation program, which covers treatment costs and lost income for people injured on the job, is entirely state funded. That includes the cost of administering the program.
But job support services — local job centers, career counseling, unemployment insurance administration, state apprenticeship programs, and the division of vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities — are “all tied to federally funded programs,” Pechacek said.
“We need the federal government to come together, come up with a funding mechanism and continue to support their obligations to all the states and to all the people to ensure that we can move forward with the economic health and prosperity that we have enjoyed without this chaotic massive interruption,” she said. “The longer this goes, the continued adverse and exponentially worse impacts to our workforce will compound.”
Pechacek’s virtual news conference Thursday took the place of DWD’s monthly report on Wisconsin employment data. The usual reports draw on the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys that poll employers on the number of jobs they have and poll households to calculate the unemployment rate.
The data BLS compiles and analyzes is one of the casualties of the shutdown, Pechacek said, hampering employers, job seekers, nonprofits, economic development agencies and governments.
All of them rely on BLS data “to guide fiscal decision making, determine whether to open or expand their businesses, determine if they’re going to hire or lay off, figure out how to allocate resources, and understand really how best to train their current workforce,” Pechacek said. Without that information, “employers are putting off important decisions, essentially fumbling around in the dark until Congress can get around to turning back the lights on.”
Unemployment claims can serve as one indicator, and Scott Hodek, section chief in the DWD Office of Economic Advisors, said the department is looking at other data sources to fill in some of the missing information. Those sources include various private sector organizations as well as the regional federal reserve banks.
“But really it’s pretty difficult to get an accurate picture of what’s happening,” Hodek said. “It will get more difficult as time goes on.”
Another federal report on inflation is expected to be released soon, even with the shutdown, because the findings are used to calculate annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, Hodek said.
That report will also figure into the deliberations of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee when it meets at the end of October to decide whether to cut interest rates. The Fed’s dual mission includes keeping inflation as close to 2% as possible while encouraging maximum employment.
“That becomes very difficult to do if you don’t have any of that data to make those decisions,” Hodek said.
Looking at the coming months, Pechacek said, the process of applying for H-2A agriculture visas is on hold. The visas enable about 3,000 migrant workers to come in annually to work in specific seasonal agricultural operations, including planting, harvesting and food processing, she said.
DWD is required to verify that there is a worker shortage in the occupations to be covered, and the U.S. Department of Labor must certify the state’s verification report before the federal government issues the visas, she said, but the federal certification of the state’s report is on hold because of the shutdown.
December and January are the months when the most requests come in for H-2A visas, Pechacek said, so if the shutdown continues for too long, the agricultural employers depending on those workers would be unable to get the needed certification.
Pechacek said the department is also watching to see how many federal employees file for unemployment insurance.
There are about 18,000 federal employees in Wisconsin, and DWD has estimated that 8,000 might be affected by the shutdown. By comparison, she said, one of the largest layoffs in Wisconsin took place in 2018 when a larger retailer shut down, laying off 2,200 employees.
So far, however, there have been just 30 initial claims from federal workers, Pechacek said.
If federal workers who file unemployment claims get back pay when they return to work, however, they’ll have to repay the unemployment insurance fund.
Pechacek noted that President Donald Trump has threatened to permanently fire federal workers in the shutdown as well as to withhold back pay for furloughed federal workers who return to work. Between uncertainty about those threats and court rulings that have blocked some mass federal layoffs, however, “it is really an ongoing situation,” she added.
Pechacek several times criticized Trump and the Republican leaders in Congress for the shutdown.
“The president and congressional Republicans have shut down our nation’s government trying to force massive health care cuts and cost increases to the nation’s working and middle class families and we are in a stalemate,” she said.
“We really need our federal government to return to work so they can restore some predictability and reliability to our economy and continue to be the partner that we need to ensure the economic health and prosperity of Wisconsin workers.”
About 13,000 disabled workers previously declared ineligible for unemployment insurance are being sent mailed notices from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development notifying them they might be eligible for past benefits, worth potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars per person.
The DWD began processing nearly 10 years worth of unemployment claims from individuals who, under a 2013 state law, were previously declared ineligible for those benefits due to simultaneously receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). But last year a court struck down that law.
That means thousands of people could receive financial compensation if they were either denied unemployment benefits or ordered to repay benefits they received between Sept. 8, 2015, and July 29, 2025, because the person collected SSDI.
A spokesperson for DWD said the total cost of the claims the agency may have to pay out is unclear right now. Individuals who receive unemployment insurance can receive a maximum of $370 per week for at most 26 weeks, which would be $9,620. But not every person files for the entire 26-week period. The current average is 13 weeks, the spokesperson said.
What led to this?
A federal judge in 2024 struck down the law that previously blocked individuals from receiving both SSDI benefits and unemployment insurance.
A spokesperson for DWD said it is mailing notices to individuals who may be eligible for past benefits, but warned that it will take time to process the claims from the designated time period.
While DWD is mailing about 13,000 notices, the agency doesn’t know how many people will actually reach out about filing a claim to receive the past benefits. Individuals must call DWD about their claim within 90 days of receiving a notice from the agency.
Where can I go for more information?
The DWD has a web page with guidance and answers to questions about the court order and individuals who may be eligible for past unemployment benefits.
People with questions can also contact a DWD Help Center phone number at 414-435-7069 or toll free at 844-910-3661 during business hours.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Robert Thornton received personalized hospital care for COVID-19 and pneumonia in his Belvidere, Ill., home in 2024 as part of a Medicare in-home care program that expired October 1. (Photo courtesy of OSF Healthcare)
The federal government shutdown is forcing a reckoning for two remote health care programs because they automatically expired Oct. 1.
The telehealth and in-home hospital care programs were both temporary — but increasingly popular — options for Medicare recipients. They allowed doctors and hospitals to bill Medicare for telehealth appointments and in-home visits from nurses to provide care that is generally only available in hospitals.
The shutdown has prevented Congress from extending them.
More than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries used telehealth services in the first half of the year, according to Brown University’s Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research.
As of last fall, 366 hospitals had participated in the hospital-at-home program, serving 31,000 patients, according to a federal report. The program, officially called Acute Hospital Care at Home, allows patients who would otherwise be hospitalized to get inpatient care at home with a combination of nurse visits, monitoring equipment and remote doctor visits.
The programs have their roots in the pandemic, when doctors and hospitals wanted to keep patients safe from the risks of travel and hospital stays. Both are for Medicare recipients, generally people over 65 or who are disabled. But since many private insurers follow federal guidelines, some physicians have stopped booking telemedicine appointments for non-Medicare patients, rather than risk a change in insurance coverage.
Alexis Wynn, who is in her mid-30s and covered by private insurance through her employer, tried to switch an in-person doctor appointment in Pennsylvania to a video visit last week. The office told her that “all telemedicine is uncovered by insurance as of Oct. 1” — so she had to cancel the routine appointment.
“It was just a follow-up appointment to make sure the dosing of my medication was still accurate, nothing that was pertinent to being face-to-face,” Wynn said. Her health insurance company later told her it still covered telehealth visits.
There have been other reports of insurers turning down non-Medicare telehealth appointments, said Alexis Apple, director of federal affairs for the American Telemedicine Association, a trade group.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” Apple said. “I’m not really sure what’s happening, but it’s unfortunate and very scary. There’s so much uncertainty out there now, and we see insurance payers start to pull back.”
Both telehealth and home hospital services can be a lifeline for older people, especially in rural areas, where residents may struggle to travel long distances for health care in person.
“In rural America, it’s often telemedicine or no medicine at all,” said Dr. David Newman, chief medical officer of virtual care at Sanford Health in South Dakota, in a September statement supporting congressional action to make Medicare telehealth permanent. Bipartisan bills that would have allowed telehealth to continue stalled in committee earlier this year in the Senate and House.
There’s an exception for telehealth rural residents — but only if they travel to a brick-and-mortar health care facility to get the remote health care service.
“The patients have to go to a clinic to receive that telehealth visit from a provider in a different location,” Apple said. “It kind of defeats the purpose.”
According to the Brown University report, California had the highest rate of Medicare telehealth usage in the first six months of this year, with 26% of beneficiaries using at least one telehealth appointment, followed by 23% in Massachusetts and 21% in Hawaii.
There’s no reason for non-Medicare insurers to stop covering any telehealth visits during the shutdown, and even most Medicare Advantage programs will continue to cover telehealth, according to Tina Stow, a spokesperson for AHIP, a health industry trade association.
Nevertheless, at least some health care centers are refusing to take new telehealth appointments or are converting existing ones to office visits.
“This is causing a lot of confusion. We are still working with our members who are insurers and providers to get a gauge on what folks are doing — because at this point reports we’ve seen seem to suggest it is company by company, provider by provider,” said Sean Brown, a spokesperson for the Health Leadership Council, representing CEOs of health care firms and insurers.
The hospital-at-home program serves a smaller number of patients but its pause has caused more disruption: The federal government required patients to be discharged from the program or transferred to a brick-and-mortar hospital by Oct.1.
The Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic had 30 patients in the program in Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin — all of whom either had to be released from the program or sent to brick-and-mortar hospitals. One of Mayo’s hospitals in Florida was already over capacity and had no room for transfers, according to reporting by Becker’s Hospital Review.
In Massachusetts, which requires commercial insurers to follow Medicare guidelines, all insured patients had to leave the program. Mass General Brigham, which operates many hospitals in the state, has rejiggered its plans to create more home care without relying on the hospital-at-home program, according to the Becker’s report.
Congress was unable to avert a shutdown by late September, and some individual providers and patients were caught unawares.
Nurses on social media discussed losing home-care jobs or being reassigned overnight when the hospital-at-home program closed Oct. 1. They worried about patients being taken away from children at home, or placed in hallway beds at overcrowded emergency rooms because of the abrupt change.
“Management scheduled a random call this morning with a super vague title. Then drop the bomb on us,” wrote one poster in Texas. “So no job. Perfect!”
In a direct message, the poster, who didn’t want their name used for fear of getting in trouble at their hospital, told Stateline, “This obviously wasn’t ideal for the patients. One of them had four children and now could no longer be home with them. Some didn’t even get to have a bed in the hospital because there were none available and had to stay in the ER in a hallway bed.”
Parkland Health System in Dallas started tapering off its hospital-at-home program in September because of the impending shutdown, and the last patients were discharged from the program by Sept. 30 without returning to the hospital, spokesperson Wendi Hawthorne said.
“We are hopeful that Congress will renew this innovative model of care in the future,” Hawthorne said.
Likewise, OSF Healthcare in Peoria, Illinois, had started to wind down its hospital-at-home program “to avoid needing to return multiple patients to a very crowded facility,” said Jennifer Junis, president of OSF OnCall, which handles home hospital care.
There were only three patients in the program Sept. 30, all of whom were ready to be discharged without returning to the hospital, Junis said. Since the program’s start in 2020, it has helped 980 patients with home care through OSF’s Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.
“It is unfortunate that we will not be able to benefit by treating qualifying patients at home, where they are most comfortable and recover faster,” Junis said. “Our digital hospital program has allowed us to free up beds for our sickest patients who need them most.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
We found no documentation confirming a Sept. 29 statement by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., that 6 million people unknowingly received health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Johnson cited a report by Paragon Health Institute, a think tank alignedwith the Trump administration.
The report produced an estimate, not a count, claiming 6.4 million people were fraudulently enrolled in Obamacare. It said they were not income-eligible, including millions who “appear to be enrolled without their knowledge.”
Fraud is much more common among brokers misappropriating patients’ identities than by patients, said KFF Obamacare program director Cynthia Cox and Justin Giovannelli of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms.
Consumers are cautioned about offers to enroll them in Obamacare.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
California accuses Tesla Insurance of systemic violations in handling claims.
Complaints soared from 21 in 2022 to nearly 2,000 through September 2025.
Tesla and partners risk license suspension and $10,000 fines per violation.
Tesla is an automaker that has its fingers in several other industries. One is insurance, which it has long promised to be the best in the business for its customers. According to authorities in California, not only is it not a leader, it’s actually so bad that it might lose its license to offer insurance altogether.
The California Department of Insurance (CDI) announced on October 3 that it’s taking enforcement action against Tesla Insurance Services, Inc. and Tesla Insurance Company, alongside State National Insurance Company, which underwrites Tesla’s policies in the state.
Regulators say the three companies failed to comply with California’s claims-handling laws over and over again. It accuses all three of “significant harm” to Tesla drivers who held policies with them.
In plain terms, Tesla Insurance Services acts as the broker selling the policies, while Tesla Insurance Company and State National handle the underwriting and claims.
A Pattern of Misconduct
Together, the CDI says, they’ve developed a pattern of misconduct so severe that the state may suspend or revoke their licenses and impose monetary penalties of up to $10,000 per willful violation.
According to the department, Tesla’s alleged offenses include extensive delays in paying valid claims, unreasonable denials, and failures to conduct “thorough, fair, and objective investigations.”
The department also accuses Tesla of not informing policyholders of their right to have claims denials reviewed by the state.
Complaints on the Rise
This isn’t an issue that the state just started tracking, either. In 2022, it noted 21 justified complaints against State National Insurance Company, which accounted for 40 regulatory violations.
The next year, those figures grew to 63 and 195, respectively. In 2024, Tesla Insurance Services joined the fray, and together, complaints rose again to 291, along with 835 violations.
So far in 2025, the department says it has received nearly 2,000 complaints, over 500 of which were justified, with more than 2,000 regulatory violations. Now, Tesla Insurance Services, Tesla Insurance Company, and State National have 15 days to respond to the accusations before they face a potential administrative hearing.
If the department prevails, the companies could be barred from transacting insurance business in California and hit with significant fines.
The U.S. Capitol on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, just hours before a federal government shutdown. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The vast majority of Americans, including Republicans and those who identify as strong supporters of President Donald Trump, want Congress to renew the enhanced tax credits for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, according to a poll released Friday.
More than 78% of people surveyed by the nonpartisan health organization KFF in late September said they want lawmakers to keep the enhanced credits. Their extension has become a major linchpin in debate about the government shutdown.
When broken down by political party, 92% of Democrats, 82% of independents and 59% of Republicans supported renewing the credits.
Within the Republican Party, 57% of people who identified as supporting Trump’s Make America Great Again policies and 70% of GOP voters who identified as non-MAGA supporters want to see the tax credits extended, according to the poll.
Spending bill held up over tax credit debate
The ACA tax credit expansion was created by Democrats in a coronavirus relief bill approved during the Biden administration and set to expire at the end of the year.
Democrats have repeatedly called on Republicans to negotiate an extension of the enhanced tax credits and have held up a stopgap spending bill to force those talks to happen now, rather than later in the year.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Thursday the discussion should happen during the next few months and that GOP lawmakers will press for “major reform.”
“That’s not a simple issue. That’s going to take weeks to deliberate and discuss and debate, but that’s the beauty of the process. We have three months to do that. That is not an issue for today,” Johnson said. “Today the only issue is whether they’re going to vote to keep the government operating for the people.”
Democrats strongly disagree, saying a bipartisan accord must be struck before the open enrollment period for ACA plans begins on Nov. 1, when consumers will see large cost increases for next year.
“We can’t accept an empty promise, which is, ‘Oh, we’ll deal with this later,’” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said on a call with reporters Thursday. “The fact is that this crisis is in front of us now. People are getting this month their premium increases if the Senate does not act.”
Murray said she finds it “ironic” that Republican leaders are saying they’ll negotiate with Democrats on health care once the government reopens after they “refused to negotiate with us during that entire time when government was open.”
The House voted mostly along party lines in mid-September to approve a seven-week stopgap spending bill that has since stalled in the Senate, leading to the shutdown.
The upper chamber, where major legislation needs at least 60 votes to advance, is set to vote again Friday to try to advance Republicans’ short-term government funding bill, though it’s unlikely to move forward amid the stalemate.
Many of those polled knew little about shutdown debate
The KFF poll looked at public knowledge and understanding about the enhanced tax credits for ACA Marketplace health insurance plans, finding 61% of respondents knew nothing or only a little about the issue.
Another 32% of those surveyed said they know some about the policy debate and 7% said they know a lot.
The poll of 1,334 adults took place Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for a full survey. Each political affiliation question has a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
The government shutdown began on Oct. 1, just after the poll wrapped.
Concern about the ramifications of letting the enhanced tax credits expire fluctuated when KFF asked the question in different ways, though those who said they were “very concerned” never dipped below a majority.
Fifty-six percent were very concerned and 30% were somewhat concerned when told “health insurance would be unaffordable for many people who buy their own coverage” if the enhanced tax credits weren’t extended.
The number of people who would be very or somewhat concerned was high among Republicans, 78%, and MAGA supporters, 76%.
Respondents who were very concerned rose to 60% when told “about 4 million people will lose their health insurance coverage” if they do not keep receiving the enhanced credits. An additional 26% said they were somewhat concerned and 10% said they were not too concerned, with the rest of those polled saying they were not concerned at all.
When broken down by political party, the number of people very or somewhat concerned remained high, with 76% of Republicans and 73% of MAGA supporters citing worry.
Small business staff, self-employed people
Fifty-one percent of those polled said they were very concerned when told “millions of people who work at small businesses or who are self-employed would be directly impacted as many of them rely on the ACA marketplace.”
Another 33% said they were somewhat concerned, 11% said they were not too concerned and the remainder said they were not concerned at all.
Seventy-five percent of Republicans and 72% of MAGA supporters responded they would be very or somewhat concerned when asked that question.
The poll showed that Congress extending the enhanced tax credits as they exist now comes with some trepidation about the price tag.
When asked how concerned people would be if they heard “it would require significant federal spending that would be largely paid for by taxpayers,” 27% said they would be very concerned, 36% somewhat concerned, 28% not too concerned and 8% not at all concerned.
Forty-one percent of Republicans said they would be very concerned, with another 41% responding they would be somewhat concerned. An additional 15% said they would be not too concerned with the rest saying they were not concerned at all.
That includes Medicaid (low-income people), Medicare (age 65 and over) and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). And they aren’t eligible to buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) marketplaces.
Federal Medicaid can reimburse hospitals for providing emergency care to unauthorized immigrants, but that is not coverage for individuals.
Vice President JD Vance said Aug. 28 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, that health care benefits can’t be sustained “if you allow tens of millions of people” into the U.S. without authorization “and give them those benefits.”
White House spokespersons did not return requests for comment.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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A judge’s order promises compensation to potentially thousands of disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.
The invalidated law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) from collecting unemployment insurance.
Two classes of workers may be eligible for compensation: those denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, under the invalidated law, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.
A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development to compensate disabled workers who were denied unemployment benefits under a state law struck down as discriminatory.
U.S. District Judge William Conley’s order promises relief to potentially thousands of workers affected by a 2013 Wisconsin law that banned recipients of federal disability aid from collecting unemployment compensation when they lost work.
But many details remain to be ironed out, including how quickly the state will reprocess a decade’s worth of denied claims and whether any claims should draw priority.
“Some work needs to be done yet to put the order into practice, and counsels for the class are working diligently to get to that point,” said Paul Kinne, one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs.
Conley issued his order Wednesday following a hearing in which attorneys representing workers and the state discussed remedies for denials under a law that Conley ruled violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The overturned law prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance.
Republican lawmakers who approved the law claimed in 2013 that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping.” But SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged recipients to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.”
Conley’s order covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, and before July 30, 2025, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received during that period for the same reason.
Not every class member is automatically entitled to benefits, Kinne said, and it may take time to determine eligibility. That’s due to a variety of factors, including potential difficulties in retrieving and analyzing past claims data — and locating the claimants. Still, Kinne expects an “overwhelming majority” of class members to be compensated.
In addition to receiving compensation for past denied claims, class members can file certifications for subsequent weeks in which they were told they were ineligible to file. These certifications should be submitted within 90 days of receiving notice from the department, the order said.
Eugene Wilson of Madison, Wis., receives federal Social Security Disability Insurance due to health issues that prevent him from working full time. After he lost his part-time job during the pandemic, the state denied his unemployment claim — citing a law that banned workers on disability from collecting unemployment insurance. He’s among workers who may be eligible to be compensated for past denials after a federal judge struck down the ban. He is shown with his dog Kane on Aug. 18, 2025. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
The order also states that claimants who were charged with unemployment fraud for not properly disclosing their SSDI status will be eligible for benefits they had to repay.
Class members who received federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost work during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits — will not receive additional benefits for weeks in which they already received pandemic aid. PUA claims were paid at a higher rate than regular benefits, Conley’s order states, and federal law bans the collection of both.
The Department of Workforce Development will begin notifying affected workers by Oct. 1, the order said. The parties must still agree on the language for those notifications, which should inform affected workers about the outcome of the lawsuit and how to claim benefits to which they should be entitled.
“I was generally pleased with the order,” Kinne said. “There is now light at the end of the tunnel for disabled people to receive the unemployment compensation that they should have received in the past.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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A 2013 state law prevented recipients of federal Social Security Disability Insurance from collecting state unemployment insurance after losing part-time work.
A federal judge struck down the law, ruling that it had “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”
A hearing will explore whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims.
Wisconsin has stopped blocking laid-off workers who receive disability benefits from collecting unemployment insurance — a response to court rulings that the practice violated federal discrimination law.
Now U.S. District Judge William Conley will consider whether and how the state should compensate workers for past denied claims. Attorneys representing the state and affected workers plan to propose remedies ahead of a hearing on Wednesday.
“In my eyes, we deserve all of it,” James Trandel, a longtime seasonal worker who faced denials for years, told Wisconsin Watch. “The law should have never been.”
The state law in question prevented recipients of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — a monthly benefit for people with disabilities who have worked and paid into Social Security — from collecting unemployment insurance after losing work.
Eugene Wilson is shown with his dog Kane on Aug. 18, 2025. He has tried for years to return to the workforce, but he rarely hears back after filing applications. (Brad Horn for Wisconsin Watch)
In proposing the law under Gov. Scott Walker in 2013, Republican lawmakers claimed that simultaneously collecting disability and unemployment benefits represented “double dipping” that “may constitute fraud.”
That overlooked the fact that SSDI guidelines have long allowed and even encouraged people on disability to supplement their income with part-time work, so long as their earnings remain below the threshold of “substantial gainful activity.”
Eight SSDI recipients, with help from attorneys, challenged the law in 2021 by filing a class action lawsuit.
Conley ruled in July 2024 that the law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, citing its “disparate impact on disabled workers seeking unemployment insurance benefits.”
But the ruling was not immediately implemented. The state’s Department of Workforce Development continued denying unemployment claims until Conley ordered it to stop in July.
DWD spokesperson Haley McCoy said the department did not oppose Conley’s order to stop enforcing the law he struck down, but she declined further comment due to pending litigation.
The lawsuit covers two classes: workers who were denied unemployment benefits after Sept. 7, 2015, due to receiving SSDI, and those who had to repay benefits they received for the same reason.
Conley will now consider who in those classes qualifies for benefits and how much they should get.
Both parties will exchange proposals before Wednesday’s oral arguments to address such questions, said Victor Forberger, an attorney for the plaintiffs who has helped many SSDI recipients pursue their claims. The plaintiffs want the state to fairly compensate those who faced discriminatory denials, he added.
The discussions may also involve how to address past claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — aid for people who lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic but didn’t qualify for regular benefits. The state initially denied PUA claims from workers on disability, but it reversed course in mid-2020 following Wisconsin Watch and WPR’s reporting on the denials.
“No one’s asking to get paid benefits twice. They’re just asking to get paid to be treated just like everyone else,” Forberger said.
Fighting for future generations
Trandel, who has used a wheelchair since a 1983 fall left his legs paralyzed, filed for unemployment for years during the off-seasons of his job as a gate chief for the Milwaukee Brewers, where he helps with tickets and security. He has since hit retirement age, now 67, allowing him to switch from SSDI to Social Security retirement benefits. The state allowed him to collect a couple of weeks of state unemployment pay for the first time this spring because he was no longer on SSDI.
Although Trandel managed to get by without the state fulfilling his past claims, he believes that compensating workers for past denials would offer a measure of justice.
But even if that doesn’t happen, he’s proud of what the lawsuit has accomplished so far.
“If I get nothing, that’s fine,” Trandel said. “At least the law’s changed so the future generations won’t have to go through what we went through the last 12 years.”
James Trandel, center, is seen at American Family Field with a group of baseball fans. Trandel works as a gate chief for the Milwaukee Brewers, helping with tickets and security. (Courtesy of James Trandel)
Judy Fintz, a seasonal worker and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, hopes that allowing SSDI recipients to collect unemployment like others will eliminate one of the many barriers they face in interacting with a long-outdated system that’s undergoing an overhaul.
Fintz spends the school year cleaning tables, windows and soda machines part time at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse dining hall. She applied for unemployment during the off months from school, when she relies on SSDI while her bills pile up. That experience was far from smooth, even outside of the denials. She faced the difficulties of having to file claims by phone rather than online due to a severe learning disability, and she said she was treated poorly.
“This should really change everything around,” Fintz said of the court proceedings. “We should be able to get (unemployment insurance) without issue, so we can pay our bills.”
Reentering the workforce
As they await the outcome of litigation, some SSDI recipients are looking for more work that accommodates their disabilities.
Eugene Wilson of Madison is one such person. He deals with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — conditions that make him easily overwhelmed by tasks and make repetitive work difficult.
Wilson found part-time work years ago before being laid off during the pandemic. He was denied regular unemployment and PUA during a process that took an additional toll on his mental health, he said.
He now receives about $1,500 a month in SSDI benefits and affords his apartment with the help of rental aid. He barely gets by.
He has tried for years to return to the workforce, but he rarely hears back after filing applications and sending thank-you messages.
“It’s like nobody wants to hire anybody on disability,” Wilson said.
“I just want to get out there and do it and show people that people on disability can do this.”
Jessica Barrera of Eau Claire lost her job during the pandemic and depended in part on Social Security Disability Insurance to survive. She spent six months fighting to receive her Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claim after being denied regular unemployment insurance, initially unaware of a state law that banned people on disability from collecting unemployment aid. “It really made me feel less than others,” Barrera said. (Courtesy of Jessica Barrera)
Jessica Barrera of Eau Claire has a similar goal. Wisconsin Watch followed her in 2020 as she navigated life as a single mother who lost her job during the pandemic and depended in part on SSDI to survive. She spent six months fighting to receive her PUA claim after being denied regular unemployment insurance, initially unaware of the 2013 state law.
“It really made me feel less than others,” Barrera said.
That pushed her toward a new goal: “to be equal” by earning a degree and returning to the workforce full time. Barrera is just two semesters away from earning her bachelor’s degree in social work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She works part time as a peer and parent support specialist, supporting families with mental health challenges — including those who face similar barriers to hers.
She lives with a rare disorder that makes her blood too thick, causing clots and severe fatigue that can make it hard to even get out of bed. Her current job gives her the flexibility to handle her frequent medical appointments and other challenges with the disease. Working full time will require finding an employer who understands her situation.
Barrera, who is not a plaintiff, encourages those seeking justice in court to stay hopeful and persistent.
“When I got the denial, had I just been like, ‘Well, I’m denied. I’m just out of luck’… Would we be where we are now?” Barrera said. “You have to sometimes be patient, but keep (up) the good fight.”
Confused about the unemployment system?
Forberger created this primer to help workers navigate the complicated process of filing unemployment claims and participating in the system.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On paper, the calculation seems simple enough: If well-trained drivers operate school buses equipped with safety devices that reduce traffic collisions, then insurance claims and premiums should likewise decrease.
In reality, insurance brokers say no single piece of technology or training technique is enough to warrant lower premiums on its own. But combined, these tools can help protect a fleet from liability in court.
“The biggest takeaway is it hopefully leads to less claims, which would ultimately drive down your cost,” said Kyle McClellan, a practice leader at NSM Insurance Brokers. “There’s not a direct correlation, like when you bundle your insurance together and you’re going to save 10 percent. But fewer claims leads to fewer dollars spent on insurance.”
While carrier insurance rates vary depending on fleet size, vehicle type, routes and loss history, rates have consistently trended upward nationwide.
Over the past year, the Consumer Price Index calculated motor vehicle insurance rising an average 6.4 percent. In one extreme case, the David School District in Oklahoma saw a 328-percent increase in insurance rates from 2020 to 2022, rising to $261,000 from $61,000 annually, per Education Week.
Rising rates often result in shopping around for better policies. When it comes to negotiating rates, McClellan said two pieces of school bus technology are particularly
attractive to providers: Cameras and telematics.
“Those allows us on the broker side to meet with school bus contractors, identify what they’re doing, how they’re doing certain things, and then go to the insurance market and tell them, here’s the reasons why you’d training fall by the wayside.
“Now they got the big screen in front of them and every time someone burps it records it, and they have to look at it instead of paying attention to what they’re doing on the road,” quipped school bus training expert Richard Fischer, who has owned Trans-Consult since 1977, after serving as a transportation and safety director in California.
Having been called as an expert witness too many times to count, Fischer said three questions often come up in court that can be addressed with training, studying driver manuals and simple record keeping: Did the driver have a duty? Did the driver previously breach this duty? What was done to correct the breach of duty?
State CDL driver manuals and the National School Transportation Specifications and Procedures manual updated by the National Congress on School Transportation don’t just lay out best practices, Fischer said. It is a driver’s job to know the manuals forward and backward.
“A driver-carrier has one duty to perform, and that’s to do everything possible to make sure that the drivers are safe to drive the bus and the kids are protected,” Fischer said.
In addition to training, he advised documenting hours and topics covered, with each driver documenting their own record in their own handwriting. A trainer writing records might implicate questions of falsified records. Most importantly though, Fischer said
don’t make excuses.
“Quit arguing the point we don’t have any money to do safety meetings or we’re short drivers, so we have to excel our training program,” Fischer said. “Everyone says we transport the most precious cargo in the world—then do it.”
Besides providing benefits on the road, many insurers favor having vehicles equipped with telematics and cameras for their benefits in court, particularly as an upward trend of high judgments increases financial risk.
Along with an increase in court-ordered “nuclear verdicts” that brokers say have resulted in increased insurance costs across the board, recent years have seen a trend of higher judgments in urban areas and lower judgments in rural areas impacting localized policy prices.
Regardless of who is at fault, Lisa Paul of Paul Consulting said juries are often poised to believe the little guy over a large company, a trend she has seen play out time and time again over a 32-year career in commercial insurance.
“Courts tend to rule against the big power unit, where people perceive there’s big dollars, whether that’s a school district or a large public company,” Paul said. “But the utilization of external facing cameras has been extremely helpful in improving the exoneration rates of accidents.”
A 2023 survey by the American Transportation Research Institute found driver-facing camera footage exonerated drivers in more cases than it provided evidence of negligence. Per legal experts surveyed, the presence of cameras seemed to drive settlements in nearly 75 percent of cases reviewed. Besides being useful in court, many commend telematics for catching both positive and negative behavior, providing opportunities for coaching and praise.
“It gives an opportunity to enhance and improve driver coaching of how the driver, the school bus operator themselves can improve their driving behavior based on how the vehicle is monitoring that during the course of transit,” Paul said.
Jeffrey Cassell, president of the School Bus Safety Company and a former director of safety for Laidlaw, credits certain camera systems, like National Express’ G-force activated DriveCam, with driving quick settlements.
“What happens is, if you’re liable, you admit to liability immediately and get to negotiating the amount and there’s no discovery. And if you’re not liable, you just get the video and send it to the plaintiff attorney,” Cassell said. “Attorneys don’t chase rainbows.”
While investing in technology and maintaining training helps avoid crashes, thus reducing insurance claims, the staunch safety advocate said keeping students safe should be motivation enough to follow best practices.
“Otherwise, it’s doing it for the wrong reason,” Cassell said. More than school bus technology and training, Cassell said loss records are ultimately the most important factor in obtaining a favorable insurance rate.
“Now if you then say to them, hang on a minute, we’ve just fitted extended stop arms, which should reduce the accidents, can we have a reduction in the premium? They’ll
say, of course you can, as soon as it shows up in your losses,” Cassell said. “If your losses go down, your premium will go down.”
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the July 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
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